


white night fantasy

by adhdmollymauk



Series: once [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Dreams, M/M, Other, Recovery, caleb typical trauma, cw Heavily Implied past sexual assault, more detailed warnings in notes, yasha invents therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-05-20 12:06:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14894333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adhdmollymauk/pseuds/adhdmollymauk
Summary: a story told in dreamscaleb's slow and messy recovery, and how he learns to love again





	white night fantasy

**Author's Note:**

> i really had to get this out of my system before the next chap of book club H
> 
> detailed warnings:  
> -caleb typical fire stuff, including a decently graphic nightmare towards the beginning  
> -mention of heavily implied past sexual assault and a ptsd reaction to it (it's right after the dream of astrid if you want to skip and doesn't get graphic)  
> -a lot a Lot of negative self talk stuff
> 
> this is so far from my usual writing style it's wild, it's unbetaed, and it's a super personal Coping thing but uh. maybe someone else will enjoy it?
> 
> title from [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csZrGg8_pYw) i know it's 2018 and songfics are passe but this is, very lowkey, one of those

The dream Caleb has as he sleeps by the Beacon is the first good dream he can remember.

His dreams are twisted, tangled things. Not always nightmares, but never happy; even the ones he can't remember leave him with a sense of unease. Sometimes he dreams in memories. Sometimes the things he remembers never happened.

The night after that he dreams of flame. He almost always dreams of flame. But he finds, to his surprise, that he can control it; if he concentrates, the flames recede, leaving him standing in a blackened forest, steam still rising from the ground. He wakes up.

It goes on like this, night after night: little by little, he takes back pieces of his dreams. One night he dreams of a holiday spent with his parents and in the dream they are happy and alive. He wakes up still crying.

He is starting to remember, slowly, what it was like to dream without fear. What nightmares were as a child, of falling and being chased by monsters. In his nightmares, now, he is always the monster.

A recurring dream: The town where he grew up, empty and silent. He is a child again, lost and crying, searching for his parents. Everything is just as he left it, but everyone is gone. The door to his home is locked, and he pounds on it, fists growing raw. He breaks through the window, feeling the glass cut through his arm, his limbs, and finds a pile of bodies. His parents lie at the front, burned almost beyond recognition, and as he sobs he begins to see their blood dripping from his hands, then the blood of all the others, until it fills the house, flame-red. He turns and sees himself in the mirror, and it's the distorted face of a monster, grinning at what he's done. He wakes up.

He has not had that dream in a week.

Control is not a thing he is used to, in dreams. He craves it, more than anything, the feeling that he controls his own future, his own hands. Something is giving it back to him, just a little, and one day when he takes but does not use a fragment of the Beacon's light he begins to dream of his home empty again and escapes it with a thought.

* * *

 

Jester's backpack sits forgotten in the cart by his feet as the others make camp around him. He imagines the portable home he will build for all of them, one day, watches Nott unroll a blanket carelessly on the ground and pictures her with a bed of her own. He takes watch, and when his watch shift ends he pretends to be wandering into the forest to relieve himself and makes his own little camp there instead, carefully laying a glowing object wrapped in cloth by his head before he drifts off. It's a risk, but he is exhausted, and he needs to, just once, have complete freedom from himself in dreams.

He stands again in a now-familiar void. The pinpricks of light around him seem to sing out in welcome, and he feels tears sting at his eyes at the feeling that he somehow belongs in this place.

Something tugs at his hands, imperceptibly, and he sees them now, surrounded in that same greyish light. He feels magic course through him, leave his hands in a rush, and the pang of fear recedes as he watches it leave him in an arc of multicolored light.

He is not used to thinking of his own magic as beautiful. But as he shapes the light between his fingers, he begins to lose himself in the sheer enjoyment of using his talents. The usual fear fades until it's barely a thought, and a long-forgotten feeling begins to build in his chest. He concentrates, spinning swirls of light into a ball, then a cube, and then something _shifts_ and the cube clatters to the ground with a solid _thunk._

Laughing, delighted, he builds an archway from the light, a tree, concentrates harder until he produces a dragon egg, the hatchling visible through its translucent skin. He builds Nott, not as she is but as he will some day help her become, a little halfling girl with Nott's eyes and Nott's proud smile. The rest of their group appear one by one, faster and faster, and he walks around each of them and studies their features, trying to read things his waking self may have missed into the shifts of their bodies.

Greyish light envelops him again as he awakens. It's early, early enough that he's able to sneak the dodecahedron back into Jester's bag with no one the wiser. It's the best sleep he's had since the last dream.

* * *

 

After that, his dreams change again. They're becoming more and more normal, mundane; an extended argument with Beau over something he can't remember when he awakes, or Fjord having a massive allergic reaction to Frumpkin that through dream logic somehow causes him to sprout wings. He dreams of places that don't make sense and people who aren't quite his friends, even has a random sex dream about a guy he talked to for maybe five seconds in a shop, which hasn't happened in a very long time. Nothing much happens in the dream, but it doesn't turn into a horrible memory, either. And if he concentrates, every one of his dreams is ever so slightly bathed in greyish white light.

Sometimes, even, he is happy in dreams. One, where Frumpkin is inexplicably huge and lets Caleb sleep curled up on top of him, makes him smile all morning. Over and over, he dreams of something that leaves a warm feeling in his chest, but he can remember only flashes. He thinks, perhaps, someone has been holding his hand.

* * *

 

One night he dreams of Astrid.

He has dreamt of her before, but not like this, not in a long time. She sits by him, reading quietly, and he places it as a memory: a rare reprieve from Trent's constant tests and lessons and punishments.

She looks up at him, and he sees none of her future in her eyes. She is nothing like she was on that last day, when she had become no more than a puppet.

"You've changed, Caleb," she says, and something about her has the air of a fortuneteller. She's not quite Astrid anymore, but the woman he had once loved is still part of whatever is speaking through her now.

"Not enough," he hears himself say.

"You are no longer his. You must be careful not to lose yourself again, but you are so close to finding what you have been looking for."

She sounds wholly different, now, a little hollow, and though the words leave her in the familiar accent, the cadence of her voice is someone else's entirely.

"It is possible, then?"

She ignores his question, only giving him a far-off look. "Your new family. They will help you, if you let them in. You are safe with them."

"Astrid, if it's really you, I am sorry--" His voice breaks before he can finish the sentence.

Her face loses some of its feeling of _wrongness_ , and something that is almost the real Astrid tells him: "We were children, Caleb, and we were hurt. It's too late for me, but you are building a new self from those ashes. Let him grow, and please, let someone in again like you did with me long ago. You are allowed, I promise you."

She fades away into light and then nothingness. He wakes up sobbing into his pillow.

* * *

 

He has known for a long time that he is attracted to any gender. Though his first love was a woman, he tends to prefer the company of men. But though he has been with people, since Astrid, he has not been in love again. He believes, somewhere deep, that he is no longer capable of loving anyone.

It happened twice. That he can remember. A woman who flirted with him at a bookshop, took him out to a bar, and when she kissed him goodnight all he could see was Astrid's face as her parents died by her hand. A man, attractive, who offered to take him back to his place and Caleb thought _why not_ and _I should_ and _maybe I need this_. Took it too fast, because _this is a normal pace_ and _I should be able to do this_. Wanted to, gods he wanted to, but as soon as the man's hands went to the wrong place he froze and couldn't feel anything and had to sit, wrapped in a blanket and shivering and trying not to cry, in a stranger's home until he was calm enough to walk. He was kind about it, at least. Didn't ask too many questions. Caleb had nightmare after nightmare for weeks, memories he had pushed back. After that he hadn't tried again.

He has not thought of any of this in a long time; has tried not to, tried to keep it in the mental box where he keeps all of the worst things, sealed away. But the box is flimsy, barely held together with plywood and cheap nails, and every so often things get out and plague him again, in flashbacks or in dreams or random unbidden thoughts. And sometimes the box will break and on those days he has to try very hard just to exist and breathe.

But somehow, slowly, existing on those days is becoming easier with them. Nott, ever patient and kind, telling him over and over things he can't seem to believe. Her pride in him is so unwarranted, her constant belief that it was not his fault, that he can do anything he sets his mind to, but something about it is beginning to calm him all the same. Beau, who refuses to take any of his bullshit, flat out tells him when he's being an asshole but also sticks by him and tries to help him get better any way she can. Even the ones who don't know what he's done, who he really is, take care of him in little ways. Jester worries, and is sometimes a distraction from his thoughts. There is something in Yasha's eyes that tells him she has been to that place too, and she teaches him tricks to calm down and focus on the world, never asking questions; he does the same for her, when he can, speaking her native language with her in dark moments. He does not yet know if he trusts Fjord, or if Fjord trusts him, but he is often a comforting presence all the same. And Molly.

He tries not to think too much about Molly.

In the waking world, it's easy to keep his distance. From his friends, from his thoughts, from feelings that threaten to upset the careful balance he maintains with the group.

In dreams, one night, his unnamed feeling gains a face and name, and he can no longer hide.

It's not a sex dream, and in a way that's almost worse. At least then he could dismiss it as a quirk of his unconscious, a random body generated from his mind's archives.

The first part of the dream is fuzzy, almost as if it hasn't been fully formed. He can't quite remember where he is, or how he got there, and then Molly is sitting across from him and laughing at something, the jewelry on his horns jingling merrily as he throws his head back.

"Seriously, Caleb, you're hilarious. Of course I love being around you. Doesn't hurt that you're gorgeous, either," Molly is saying, the tail end of a conversation Caleb can't remember. He sounds oddly.... himself, rendered perfectly, where usually in dreams his friends are not quite right, or even their personalities wearing a stranger's face.

And because it's a dream, and the words make his heart swell in a way he's been trying so hard not to think about, he finds himself quietly taking Molly's hand.

Somehow he knows it will be received the way he hopes, and it is: Molly laughs softly, breathlessly, and laces their fingers together, and says "If I knew calling you gorgeous was all it took I'd have done this long ago."

And then he's brushing his lips across Caleb's knuckles and the look on his face is nothing short of adoring, like Caleb is the most precious thing in the world, and Caleb's dreaming so none of the nervousness is there and all he can feel is warmth and something like love.

He wakes up. He is going to have a problem.

* * *

 

He starts to notice things, little things, and he simultaneously tells himself he's reading too much into them and that they mean something after all. Starts trying, almost unconsciously, to make sarcastic remarks and little jokes around Molly, and watching his reactions, careful, wondering. Molly's careless flirting seems to be aimed at everyone but him, which is suspicious in itself. Part of his mind dismisses this as wishful thinking, a wish he should not even have, something he doesn't deserve. Another part, one he cannot seem to get rid of, coolly analyzes Mollymauk's behavior and looks for weaknesses to exploit, and it is starting to ping his feelings toward Caleb, whatever they are, as a weakness.

The second dream hurts far worse.

It starts normally, just the Nein in a tavern somewhere. Their faces are a little blurry, a little off, but something gives him the sense that they are all there.

Molly comes up behind him, puts an arm around his shoulders and drapes himself across Caleb's lap as if it's the most normal thing in the world. Beau yells for them to get a room, and Jester says how cute they are together, and Caleb knows this isn't real. He wants so badly to just let go, to let himself feel loved and happy in a way he barely remembers how to feel, but it is not real and indulging in this will only make him feel worse down the line.

"This is not real," he says aloud, and at the words the tavern around them vanishes, leaving him standing in empty void.

He expects Mollymauk to have vanished with it, but he's still there, sitting cross-legged on nothingness with his coat spread out under him.

"You are not real either," Caleb tells him. Molly just laughs and pulls a tarot card out of thin air. It doesn't look like the ones Caleb has seen him playing with; the back is a simple geometric pattern, gray lines on white, and on the front, the image of a hand cupping a small flame.

The next night his unconscious skips all the trappings and just places him and dream-Mollymauk in that same void. His mind seems determined to make him confront something, and Caleb is not having any of it. He turns away, concentrates, and begins to build things out of thin air: door after door after door, each one a different shape and pattern. It's calming, taking his mind off the tiefling that seems determined to invade his dreams.

"Those are very nice," Mollymauk says from behind him.

"Go away," Caleb says, and builds a gate, wrought-iron and twice as tall as he is.

"Really, Caleb, I'm beginning to get some mixed signals here. You're thinking about me enough to dream of me nearly every night, but you won't even look at me?"

"More for your sake than mine." Caleb finally looks him in the eyes, but only for a second before he can't take the intensity of their gaze. "I am trying not to think about you because I don't want to hurt you."

"Hurt me how, exactly?"

"In every possible way, because my mind is fucked up and I do not know how to have feelings anymore, much less act on them."

He would rather let his own feelings fade away, try not to think about this, not to let anything happen. It's better for everyone. He does not deserve to have feelings like these.

* * *

 

The dreams stop altogether. He avoids Mollymauk, to the point that the others start to notice, but to his credit Molly leaves him be. And, somehow, it's awful. He finds himself, more and more, wanting to just be around Molly, spend time with him silently or just talking about nothing at all, and the more he tries to push down the feeling the worse it gets.

"Caleb, something is clearly wrong," Yasha says one day.She's come to his room while the others are all out shopping; it's something they do now, just spending time together.

"Something is always wrong with me," Caleb says and laughs wryly.

"I understand how you feel, I really do, but maybe it would help to just... talk about it? You are my friend, and I care about you a lot, and whatever you're going through I would like to help."

Hearing her say those words, embarrassingly enough, brings him almost immediately to tears.No matter how many times he is told things like this, they almost always do.

"Sorry, I--"

"Would you like.... a hug," Yasha says, and when he nods just a little she awkwardly puts her arms around him. He has no idea how hugs are supposed to go or whether he is doing it right, but something about her strong arms makes him feel safer, and he's almost coherent by the time she pulls away.

"I am.... having feelings that I shouldn't," he admits. "And I'm trying to get rid of them but nothing is working and..." He trails off, unable to find the words.

"Why shouldn't you have them?"

"I do not deserve to, first of all. And it will turn out badly and I will end up hurt, and I might hurt someone else, and I don't even know how to have feelings like this in a normal way because it has been so long and the last time went so horribly wrong."

"It sounds to me like you're just scared, and hurting, and your mind is trying to give you every possible reason to shy away from something that might end up making you happy."

He just stares at her.

"Caleb. Listen to me. All of that stuff that you just said? You need to cut through all of that and think about what you want. In an ideal world, with no baggage and no trauma and whatever else. Just. What would make you happy?"

"I don't think I have an answer for you," he says, toying with the bandages on his hands.

"You don't need to, right now. But as someone who has experience with--with guilt, and fear, and some of the stuff that you're working through--please promise me you'll try to think about it."

* * *

 

The dreams return that night. He's sitting on the end of his bed at the inn, Mollymauk sprawled ungracefully across it behind him.

 _Are you happy now, Yasha_ , he thinks, but in truth some part of him has missed this.

"I do not know what kind of dream you think this is but I'm not joining you," Caleb says, getting up and pacing across the room.

Molly sits up, grinning languidly. "What kind of dream do you want it to be?"

He remembers Yasha asking him what he wants. He thinks, maybe, this will get it out of his system. And he makes a decision.

Putting out a hand, he pulls Molly to his feet, memorizing the electric feeling when their hands touch. He almost loses his nerve, but reminds himself that this is a dream, and there will be no real consequences. He carefully places his hands behind Mollymauk's head, takes a deep breath, and kisses him.

When he remembers this dream the next morning, the details have faded away, and all he remembers of the kiss is the feeling it gives him: like light is pouring out through the cracks in his body, light he didn't realize he still had.

* * *

 

Somehow, that kiss is all it takes to rip away one of the constraints he's put on himself. He may not be allowed this in reality, but in sleep his mind seems determined to give him what he craves, and he's decided to let it.

He dreams of waking up next to Molly. His first instinct is to shy away, but he breathes, reminds himself he is allowed this, and lets himself smile.

"Well, this is a pleasant surprise," Molly says. His expression is so open and soft that Caleb feels a dull ache in his chest from looking at him and has to hide his face again.

"Hi," Caleb says softly, and turns away from him so that he doesn't have to see his face and get overwhelmed with emotion again, but stays close.

"This okay?" Mollymauk's arms wrap around his waist, his chin coming to rest on Caleb's shoulder. It's more than okay. He nods, just a little.

"Is it all right if I kiss you, because I really cannot overestimate how _very_ much I want to do that right now," Molly says into his ear. A shiver runs through him, unbidden, and it only takes a second before he nods again.

Molly is unbelievably gentle with him, brushing his hair aside before softly trailing kisses along his jaw and down to his shoulder. He doesn't take it any further than that, doesn't do anything Caleb doesn't tell him to.

Caleb finds himself smiling on and off all day.

He starts to lose track of how many times he has kissed Molly in dreams. They never go further than that, and sometimes the dreams are simpler: holding hands as they walk somewhere, or a half-remembered snippet where Molly calls him pet names and compliments him over some little thing. He is careful not to be alone too long with the real Mollymauk, not to say anything stupid, but they talk, sometimes. Whatever they are in his head, at least they're building a real friendship, and he tries to hold onto that. Tries not to let his feelings get in the way.

He doesn't even know what those feelings are, anymore. Whether he feels them for someone who's real or the person he only knows in his head. But he gets the same feeling in his chest whenever Molly laughs, and can't help smiling when he's around, and no matter how many times they kiss in dreams he never stops wanting to do it for real. It hasn't gotten out of his system: if anything, it's only gotten worse.

He dreams of just sitting together, leaning against Molly's side on the edge of the cart and looking up at the stars. When he remembers it, later, he knows there was a conversation, but it's hazy; the only thing that sticks is how warm he feels.

And one thing. Just a phrase, but something he never thought he would hear again.

_"I love you, Caleb."_

It almost sends him into a panic when he awakes, for reasons he can't even understand. If he thinks about it for long enough he can figure it out, but right now all he can feel is the stab of anxiety and tears stinging at his eyes. He does not deserve love, and the fact that he believes someone could--

He remembers Yasha telling him to talk to someone. The thought of telling anyone the details of.... this is terrifying, but he does not trust himself not to say something he'll regret if he doesn't get this out.

Haltingly, he tells Yasha an abbreviated version of what's been going on. He thinks about telling Nott, but the thought of her just going to fight Mollymauk immediately is enough to stop him. He trusts Yasha, and he trusts her not to tell someone else about his stupid irrational crush.

Whatever he expects her reaction to be, the look on her face right now is not it.

"Yasha?" he says, panic rising again at the thought that he's said something wrong. She's looking at him like he's done something somehow incredible.

"Hang on a second," she says, and then she's gone.

She returns a few minutes later with a stunned-looking Mollymauk in tow. Caleb has never wanted to sink into the earth more than at this exact moment.

"Tell him what you told me," Yasha says, and Caleb can't breathe for a second before he realizes she's talking to Molly.

"Yasha, seriously?"

"Listen, I don't know what's going on, but you two really need to talk. I'll leave you to it." And with that she's just gone again.

"I don't know what she's going on about but she seems to think we've been having the same dreams," Molly says. It's the most terrifying sentence Caleb has ever heard. "Listen, I--do you remember the tarot card, with the hand holding the flame?"

Molly takes something in his face as confirmation and nods. "Honestly, I kind of guessed that a long time ago, to some extent anyway. Figured it was some magic bullshit and didn't want to think too hard about it. But, uh. You didn't know?"

He's frozen. The thought of all of that being, at least partly, real is simultaneously unthinkably awful and wonderful. And then his analytical brain takes over and finds the solution to the puzzle, one that's been staring him in the face the whole time.

"The dodecahedron," he says. "I--do not know what exactly it does but it has.... helped me, in dreams, before. Do you think it--"

"Honestly, Caleb, I don't really care what did it. I just wanted to say, uh. That thing I said, earlier? I guess that counts as earlier? I meant it."

When Caleb looks up again, he's gone.

* * *

 

Running away seems like the only option in a time like this. So he does.

He slips away from the group on a crowded city street and does not stop running until he knows they can't find him. Finds a dark corner under a bridge, a neglected little place where he can sleep. He is used to finding places like these. Falling back on this, just getting out while he can, is the only thing he can do.

Sure enough, being away from the dodecahedron means that his dreams go back to normal. Completely normal. For the first time in a while, he has one of the old nightmares, but he's surprised to find that he isn't as affected by it as he used to be. Somewhere in all of this, he's started to recover.

It takes him a couple of days of self-hatred and old patterns before he really lets himself think about it.

Mollymauk had known, or at least somewhat known, the whole time, and yet he never tried anything and let Caleb take the lead no matter what. He had been so willing to take it slow, so genuine and kind, and Caleb has fucked it all up now. He could have really had something, had a partner who cared for him enough to help him through all of the bullshit his mind throws at him, and he fucked it all up because he didn't think he deserved it.

Maybe this is what the dodecahedron has been trying to show him: his own value, through what he could do and then through someone who saw what he could not. Whatever it is, whatever it can do, it could be the key to getting him where he needs to go. And he's fucked that up too.

That part of himself that still thinks like an interrogator, still thinks like _him_ , has been quiet, he realizes. There were so many opportunities to hurt Molly, in the no-consequence space of what he thought were mere dreams, and he never once had.

Fuck, Caleb loves him back.

* * *

 

The Nein hasn't left the inn they had been staying at. He slips into his old room, trying to avoid notice, and finds Nott pacing in a corner.

"Caleb!" she shrieks, and throws herself at him with a wild force that would have knocked him to the ground had she been any taller. "You should have told me you were going, I would have come with you!"

"I needed to be alone for a while, but I'm all right now, I am sorry." He ruffles her hair lightly.

"You were too far away to send a message and I was so scared you were dead! You can't do that to me again, Caleb, I mean it."

"I won't, I promise." He means it, too.

Jester cries when she sees him, incomprehensible wailing broken by cries of "I'm so glad you're okay!!!" It takes ten minutes to detach from her, and she won't let go of his hand, but he finds he doesn't mind.

Fjord gives him a genuine smile and a "Glad you're feelin' better, we were all worried."

"We were all worried!" Kiri mimics him, eyes wide, and fluffs up her feathers.

Beau hugs him, too, which is awkward and unexpected, and to his surprise she's crying a little. Yasha just smiles.

"Sorry, but would you all excuse me? There's someone I need to talk to," he says.

* * *

 

It doesn't take much searching to find Molly sitting at a table at the back, keeping his distance.

"Hi," Caleb says, sitting down next to him and trying his hardest to breathe normally.

"Hey. You all right?"

"I think so. Now I am."

"Listen, I-"

"I wanted to-"

They both try to start talking at the same time, tripping over each other's words.

"I want to make this work," Caleb says, a little too loudly.

Molly's biting his lip, looking at him in that way he has, that Caleb has been too dense to notice him doing for months now.

"I am.... absolutely terrified. I have not done the relationship thing in so long and I thought, for a very long time, that I was no longer able to love anyone that way. And now there's..... this, and there's _you_ , and I do not deserve to be looked at the way that you look at me, but I. I still want you to, and I want to try to make this work."

"Yes," Molly breathes, looking at him in a way that's impossible to ignore, impossible to read as anything but adoring. "Gods, yes, whatever pace you want, I just want to be with you."

"Forgive me if that's.... hard to believe, right now," Caleb says, but he doesn't look away. And when Mollymauk reaches out for his hand, he takes it.

**Author's Note:**

> if you want to yell at me for this i am on [tumblr](http://adhdmollymauk.tumblr.com/)
> 
> theoretically this is planned to be part of a shortish series (including a nsfw thing i think) and im Thinking of doing a molly pov companion piece to this one, lmk if that's something yall would like to see!


End file.
